Cohoes Citizens Party's charge against the machine: 50 years later

By Danielle Sanzone

Sunday, July 28, 2013

COHOES -- It's been 50 years -- half of a century -- since the Cohoes Citizens Party overcame the Albany County machine in multiple elections.

This victory started a domino effect that led to the Spindle City becoming an All-America City and to it receiving federal funding through the Model City program, changing the political and physical infrastructure of the city for years to come.

It all began with the vision of an independent political party, led by Cohosier Paul Van Buskirk.

Now 78 years old and living in Florida, Van Buskirk was a new graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy when he started the charge against the Democratic machine which had run the county, especially Cohoes, for about three decades starting with the reign of Michael "Big Mike" Smith and eventually ending with Smith's nephew, William Dawson. Dawson was the behind-the-scenes leader of the machine in the 1960s when the Citizens Party organized and ran its own slate against the one offered by the machine -- and won.

"They fought City Hall. And they won," said Randy Koniowka, a community leader and local history buff who just finished a book about historic figures in Cohoes' history.

And it started in 1963 with the new party's successful mayoral campaign for Dr. Jay McDonald, who overcame incumbent Andrew Santspree. Van Buskirk said he remembered Santspree as a good man, but someone who was being manipulated by the machine.

"I had experienced all the bad that was involved with the machine and did not want to accept that we had to live under this dictatorship," Van Buskirk said in a recent phone interview with The Record.

But it was not easy. The road to the 1963 and subsequent 1967 victories was paved with Van Buskirk receiving multiple death threats and even bribes from the machine, including a job as city engineer if he would disband the Citizens Party.

The political reform organization started with 14 people and grew from there with both business and social meetings for the members, said Van Buskirk, who at that time was around 24 years old.

The group ran a local law referendum in the early 1960s to amend the city charter with street repairs being paid for using a general assessment versus a special assessment. The machine offered a mirror-opposite law amendment and the Citizens Party had their first victory at the polls, Van Buskirk remembered.

While first starting out, he said he reached out to local media outlets but at the time The Record was hesitant to print stories about the organization and their meeting, possibly partially due to Dawson working as a cartoonist for the daily.

"But they eventually came around," he said, and noted that the New York Times and the Associated Press also picked up on the 1963 victory and the All-America city win in 1966.

Gil Ethier, now the city Democratic Party chair, said he remembered the Citizens Party causing a "rift" in the politics as usual.

"They were questioning everything about the city government. They built up a lot of momentum, it was unbelievable. They came at the right time. The city needed a change," said Ethier, who has been involved with the Democratic Party since he was 18 and remembered thinking, at the time, that he was not party of a political machine but that he was involved with the "organization."

But, as the saying goes, "absolute power corrupts absolutely" and by the 1970s there were rumblings of corruption now within the Citizens Party.

"There were a lot of internal problems and nepotism took place," Van Buskirk recalled.

And by the early 1980s, the Citizens Party was gone but the benefits from the all but dismantled machine and from the Model City funds remained including the restoration of the music hall, the construction of the senior towers, and public housing improvements -- along with the pride of having been chosen from more than 100 nominations to be an All-America City, which Albany has also received twice.

"It was a miracle transformation, both physically and politically," commented Koniowka.

Now, Van Buskirk is still working as an engineer in urban planning with no plans to retire. He's writing a book about the political history he witnessed, with no timeline in mind for when it might be published.